White House: Website won’t be fixed by December 1

posted at 10:41 am on November 26, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Old and busted: Healthcare.gov will be fully operational by November 30th. New hotness: Healthcare.gov will, er, work better than it did by December 1!

Brought to you by the same people who insisted that if you liked your insurance plan, you could keep it:

Obama administration officials said Monday that some visitors to HealthCare.gov will experience outages, slow response times or try-again-later messages in December.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) delivered the message in the latest attempt to downplay expectations for Nov. 30, the administration’s self-imposed deadline for fixing ObamaCare’s federal enrollment site.

CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille said errors that persist past this weekend would be “intermittent” and, in line with a promise made by the White House, would not affect the vast majority of the site’s users.

But Bataille acknowledged that some would still experience “periods of suboptimal performance” by the system due to either heavy traffic or technical issues that are still being addressed.

“The system will not work perfectly on Dec. 1, but it will work much better than it did in October,” Bataille said.

Speaking of suboptimal performance …

The comments came after HealthCare.gov experienced an unscheduled outage on Monday for one hour. The CMS had recently touted the site for not randomly crashing. Bataille said the problem was remedied quickly by the site’s tech team.

Let’s recall that the pledge last month was specifically that Healthcare.gov would be “fully functional” by December 1. That date was not an accident. In order to have coverage by January 1, enrollees have to complete their enrollment by mid-December, although the administration is trying to get insurers to wait until December 23rd rather than the 15th as the cutoff. If the web portal still can’t handle the enrollments properly and fully by that time — and the 834s to the insurers seem to still be a big problem in that regard:

Behind the scenes, when an individual selects a plan, the federal system transmits a file, known as an “834,” with all of the relevant information about that individual and his or her plan selection.

These files have been plagued by errors, from spouses and children being mixed up to enrollments being duplicated or inadvertently cancelled. According to HHS, they have “completed fixes for two-thirds of the high-priority bugs that our tech team working with issuers identified as being responsible for the issues with 834 transactions and other issuer priorities.”

But according to an insurance industry source, though the 834 problems are getting better, there is still a long way to go. Insurers still haven’t reached the point where they can feel confident that the data is reliable.

As a result, though they have been able to process some payments from individuals, they’ve only been able to do so on piecemeal basis in cases where they are fully confident in the data, often because it’s been verified by hand.

That’s another problem. If the front end starts working better, the deluge of last-minute enrollments to comply with the individual mandate will flood insurers with bad data, which will be impossible to fix by hand in that level of throughput. Let’s also not forget that the subsidy-payment system doesn’t exist yet, either. This announcement only relates to the consumer experience of Healthcare.gov, not the full functionality. Without the subsidy payments to the insurers, there’s still a large question as to whether those subsidy-qualifying enrollees will actually have coverage on January 1 if insurers don’t get the full premiums in hand by December 31st, a deadline which now looks impossible to meet.

For Democrats, the politics of the health care law are creating a death spiral of their own. For the White House to protect its signature initiative, it needs to maintain a Democratic Senate majority past 2015. But to do so, Majority Leader Harry Reid needs to insulate vulnerable battleground-state Democrats, who are all too eager to propose their own fixes to the law that may be politically satisfying, but could undermine the fundamentals of the law.

Race-by-race polling conducted over the last month has painted a grim picture of the difficult environment Senate Democrats are facing next year. In Louisiana, a new state survey showed Landrieu’s approval rating is now underwater; she tallied only 41 percent of the vote against her GOP opposition. In Arkansas, where advertising on the health care law began early, Sen. Mark Pryor’s approval sank to 33 percent, a drop of 18 points since last year. A new Quinnipiac survey showed Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, who looked like a lock for reelection last month, in a dead heat against little-known GOP opponents. Even a Democratic automated poll from Public Policy Polling showed Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina running neck-and-neck against Republican opposition, with her job disapproval spiking over the last two months. These are the types of numbers that wave elections are made of.

The big picture isn’t any better: The president’s approval rating, which historically correlates with his party’s midterm performance, has dipped below 40 percent in several national surveys. Democrats saw their nine-point lead on the generic ballot in the Quinnipiac survey evaporate in a month, and a CNN/ORC poll released today shows Republicans now holding a two-point lead.

“You want to prevent your race from being about Obamacare. If you enable your race to be about Obamacare, you’re making a mistake,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who’s working for Landrieu. “You need to explain what you’re trying to fix, and you better be trying to fix something. If there’s nothing you want to fix, there’s something wrong with you. At this point, it’s hard to defend the benefits, but you can say we’re not going back to the evils of the old system.”

In the old system, 85% of Americans had health insurance, and 87% were satisfied with their health care. Good luck trying to run on the “evils” of that system, especially after getting an up-close-and-personal look at DemocratCare.

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Comments

I suppose, but we keep doing the same things, hoping for the best (or for the next election), and getting the same results.

neuquenguy on November 26, 2013 at 12:06 PM

I don’t have faith in the GOP, either, but with the utter disaster ChoomCare is, I have even less faith in the Dumbocrats at this point…”pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” will be haunting them for years to come…

But to do so, Majority Leader Harry Reid needs to insulate vulnerable battleground-state Democrats, who are all too eager to propose their own fixes [which suck] to the law that may be politically satisfying, but could undermine the fundamentals of the law [which suck].

I know it may be too much to ask of “the stupid party” aka the GOP, but they need to be running on a sweep of all the Senate seats held by Democrats and getting as many House seats as needed to obtain the numbers to override a veto of hellish-care.

It remains to be seen if a Republican majority in both the house and the senate, along with a Republican president in 2016 will follow through to repeal this horror, begin to deal with the unsustainable welfare state, and actually reduce the size of government.

Ordinary American on November 26, 2013 at 11:57 AM

You are a dreamer, arent you?

neuquenguy on November 26, 2013 at 12:01 PM

Yes I am. But in this case I’m doubtful that the GOP has the will or the desire to really reduce the size of government, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they come up with their own “fix” for DemocratCare instead of repealing it and returning it totally to the free market.

so, we’ve destroyed 100% of the health insurance market to extend insurance to that uncovered 15%, who could have easily just been included in Medicaid…which is where they are now (most likely).

That’s change you can believe in!

Actually, it’s worse. Of the roughly 45 million who are uninsured today, about 30 million will remain uninsured according to the CBO estimates. So, we’ve destroyed 100% of the health insurance market, had the government seize control of 1/6th of the national economy, and will spend between $2.5T – $3T over the next decade to provide insurance for about 15 million people….most of whom will be added to Medicaid under the new qualification rules.

Oh, and none of this covers the 5-10 million losing coverage now or the 90-100 million who will lose their coverage next fall. Will all of them find replacement policies? That are ‘affordable’? That let them keep their Doctors or have access to top hospitals?

Is the Progressive/Liberal takeover off America so complete that we have no single tech giant who is a Conservative?

Has the Left finally won the idealogical war? It doesn’t matter if Ocare fails, that was the plan all along to go to single-payer socialized medicine. Debt is meaningless to Lefties. Global strife is inconsequential as long as it doesn’t directly affect the ability of government to oppress the people back home.

We are, finally after more than century of progressive/socialist/marxist/modern liberal influence, too far gone to repair this country.

Not one of you will stand up and fight. You are all too comfortable with your high speed internet and cable TV full of athletic event distractions to be roused to action. There is no Conservative country worth emigrating to in the whole world.

“You want to prevent your race from being about Obamacare. If you enable your race to be about Obamacare, you’re making a mistake,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who’s working for Landrieu. “You need to explain what you’re trying to fix, and you better be trying to fix something. If there’s nothing you want to fix, there’s something wrong with you. At this point, it’s hard to defend the benefits, but you can say we’re not going back to the evils of the old system.”

In the old system, 85% of Americans had health insurance, and 87% were satisfied with their health care. Good luck trying to run on the “evils” of that system, especially after getting an up-close-and-personal look at DemocratCare.

To progressives, the “evil” of the old system was that they, the enlightened ones, didn’t get to decide who lives and who dies. That’s it. Period. Dot.

O-Care gives them that power. Single-payer will make it absolute.

It’s all about the “perfection of the New Man”. He’s been called the “New Soviet Man”, the “New German”, and the “New Woman” at different times, but in the end, it’s the creation of a perfectly obedient serf to serve the Perfect Rulers which is the objective.

Eugenics is their philosophy. Ultimate power is their goal.

And once they get it, and begin to get simultaneously bored with that power and afraid that someone might be able to snatch it from them somehow…

Well, that’s how genocide begins. Especially with people who don’t much like anyone not exactly like them to begin with.

But Bataille acknowledged that some would still experience “periods of suboptimal performance” by the system due to either heavy traffic or technical issues that are still being addressed.

It’s a good thing Morrissey didn’t post this early this morning. I would have spit my coffee all over the monitor. This one’s got to go into the Obama anals of “a proficient presidency”. Periods of suboptimal performance??? Wonder it that one will work on my girl friend what I forget to take my Viagra? Uh, sweetie, you’re just “seeing things”.

Before Dec 31 the WH and media lapdogs will declare it is fixed and everything will be back to normal, in their eyes. You will only hear of problems from the right (truth) leaning news media.
bottom line – Don’t count the elections won.

So, we’ve destroyed 100% of the health insurance market, had the government seize control of 1/6th of the national economy, and will spend between $2.5T – $3T over the next decade to provide insurance for about 15 million people….most of whom will be added to Medicaid under the new qualification rules.

Yes, if this had been about offering healthcare to all, we could have taken that money and bought each of the 15 mil a premium health care policy and still have been ahead.

The latest I’ve heard from the Demorats (and apparently one “winning” strategy) is that actually this is all the insurance companies fault. These companies KNEW the Demorats were lying for the last 3 years, sold you policies anyhow, and didn’t tell you and me they would be cancelled in 3 years because the Demorats lied – so it’s their fault!

It’s not just in Minnesota, and it’s not that they’re stupid. The GOP establishment thinks its top priority is not to defeat Democrats, but to crush and destroy the conservative wing of the Republican Party. They’d much rather see Democrats gain seats in the House and Senate than see more “wacko birds” like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee get elected. As far as they’re concerned, our only job is to sit down, shut up, keep writing those checks to the RNC, and vote for the candidates they choose for us.

That’s why I don’t take any of this talk about the GOP making huge gains in 2014 seriously for even a minute. Even with Obamacare tailspinning into the ground, and Democrats utterly refusing to eject, at the end of the day the GOP establishment will find a way to make sure they don’t pay any real political price. It’s much more important to make sure the barbarians don’t breach the gates, after all.